IBM Helps Konkan Railway Build Smarter Railroad

India’s youngest rail operator Konkan Railway is leveraging IBM software to extract fresh insight to improve its train management system, to ensure commuter safety and reduce costs by 20 percent.

To effectively manage business and its growth, while keeping costs low, Konkan Railway turned to IBM software to streamline its business services and to keep its trains running on-time.

With more than 4,500 employees and 14,000 passengers daily, Konkan Railways manages a large network of passenger and freight trains. The primary goal of the railway system is to improve service for its passengers, replace redundant manual procedures with efficient technology solutions to ultimately bring greater operating efficiency.

Konkan Railway selected IBM Informix Dynamic Server, when they developed their ‘Railway Application Package’ (RAP) system to help manage, analyse and maintain train running information, schedules and reduce passenger delays. Real-time data is fed into the management system that uses smart analytics to respond to information in real time – whether it is scheduling delays, abnormalities or passenger queries.

The railway solution helps minimal staff manage all aspects of Konkan’s business, from real-time management of train-running, collecting ticket revenue, managing finances and human resources, to automatically controlling station platforms lighting with train-movements. IBM software provides Konkan Railway with high availability, requiring only two database administrators for managing 66 database server instances.

“IBM has helped us keep our IT management costs down, while supporting rapid growth of our Railway system,” said Vijay Devnath, Chief Manager (IT), Konkan Railway. “With the Railway Application Package system running on IBM software, Konkan Railway has significantly improved its ability to analyse, maintain and present data, helping to reduce the likelihood of passenger delays and cultivating better decision-making. Additionally, by automating the light-switching at stations with train arrival-departures, the system has helped cut such energy costs by approximately 20 percent.”

IBM software also helps in managing the platform lights for all passenger-carrying trains at each station and ventilation in few long tunnels. These long tunnels are each more than two km long. Konkan Railway developed information-flow systems and analytics to manage timely air-circulation and platform lights, in an effort to be energy-efficient. Not only does this help the Railway operate more efficiently, but has also resulted in significant energy savings. The same system also offers a Web-based train location system, train operations management facility and a ticketing operations management module.